Musings on computers and software as I continue learning and sharing software development knowledge.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

10 Years of Ruby!

Let me recollect not very recent past. It was 2008 and recession was at its peak. Back then, I was largely a self-taught developer and had a working knowledge in struts & ejb (the java heavyweights at that time). After unsuccessfully trying to yield a job, I finally decided to pursue my masters in computer applications (out of necessity, or so it seemed back then).
During this frustrating period, I heard about Ruby On Rails, which was touted as the next-gen platform/language. As with other people, I was quite scared of it as the name sounded very unfamiliar. So, I didn't pursue it. However in the summers of 2009, as I was idling across the netbeans.org looking for some interesting activity to do, I came across this '5-minute Weblog' exercise on rails and decided to have a go.
Believe me, it was one of the turning point in my career and I spent more than an hour figuring out exactly how I was able to generate a web application just like that using practically no big tools.

As the things turned out, I was not the only one who leaded this entirely new approach. During a recent magazine interview(http://www.pragprog.com/magazines/2010-12/chad-fowler-on-ruby), Chad Fowler, a prominent figure on Ruby Conference and a ruby authority echoed similar views.
During this interview, it was interesting to observe the maturing of ruby as a language and a platform (performance wise and lightweight for mobile devices).

My current job deals with java, however Ruby & Scala have kept my other side of programming (hacking & open-sourcing) buzzing with activity and with a healthy mix of curiosity and satisfaction.